Techmongers

 When I decided to study at codaisseur 2 years ago, they advertised their program as "No experience or previous knowledge needed, in 10 weeks become a software engineer". 

And this is a huge lie. 

I had no experience in coding before joining the bootcamp, but I have always been quite tech-savvy. And there I was, just on the first day we learned about git, the terminal, HTML and CSS. All in the span of 8 hours. How would anyone expect somebody with "no previous coding knowledge" to get familiar with all these 4 topics in just one day? The second day we were already busy with javascript, no need to say I was falling behind the program from the first day and that there was a huge gap of knowledge. At the end of the second week we were already busy with React. 

I did my university years working full time at the same time, and that was not half stressfull as were these weeks at Codaisseur. An insane amount of information is thrown at you, with no time to process it and to properly learn. Learning, especially in coding, must be a process of changing your way of thinking and to "mold" your head. Not to type code without really understanding what you are doing. 

I decided to stop the bootcamp on the third week. In the exit interview I mentioned what I just wrote referring to the "no experience needed", to which they answered "no experience needed is very subjective", no, my friends, no experience is no experience, period. 
 
I felt like a failure. It took me one year to gather the motivation again to start learning coding, and this time I did it on my own, with Udemy courses and online resources, learning at my own path and really letting the new information sink in and changing my way of thinking code-wise. Now I am working as a junior developer. 

After doing the online courses I could see the value of the Codaisseur program, but this was because I already had some knowledge about it. And to be honest, if you already feel comfortable with coding, I wouldn't say the program is worth going into debt for it. Just keep learning on your own. 

Summarizing: 
+ Good teachers
- Terrible structure of the program, rushing to learn and you end up learning nothing and hating code before knowing what is actually code 
- Misleading marketing strategies, or in other words, lying strategies. "No experience needed, but, actually.... " 

Tl;dr - Please avoid this scam/school. Freecodecamp is free. If you really want to do a coding bootcamp then join another one... and always read the contract. 

What seems too good to be true is probably too good to be true. *Invisible conditions attached. What Codaisseur's advertising so proudly says appears more like a burden once you read the contract. According to the contract you cannot go anywhere out during the job search period. You cannot get sick. Yes you cannot get sick. You have to be spending 36 hours applying for jobs per week. Even during corona period if you cannot pay for your accomodation or need to find a part time job you are not allowed to do that. I am sure this is not allowed by the Dutch government. 

Unfortunately you only do receive the contract when you have completed a post-application interview and paid the 800 euros fee to 'reserve your seat'. In the interview I was told the below 2 things which turned out to be untrue. 

A - My batch had a graduation rate of 50% which leads one to believe that Codaisseur has been fudging their stats for a while. Their model does not want to help you which is what a school should do. Instead they focus on eliminating those who fail tests every week so that only those who can either learn a lot very well or those who already had prior coding experience remain. For both these groups of people it would have been wiser to avoid the school altogether in hindsight. 

B - Illusions are everywhere. There is no such network of business partners. Since I graduated for almost a month I had to request this list multiple times from the Codaisseur staff. When they finally sent it to me I was shocked to see what looked like a very amateur school project of business contacts. These contacts were made by students who had graduated before and landed jobs. During the interview Codaisseur pushes students to advertise their employing of said student as a business connection. In reality this is more of a burden on both the company and the student. 90% of companies I applied to did not respond to me and I suspect it is because they already know about Codaisseur's predatory model. 

The only pro is most of and not all the teachers. Most of the teachers are qualified and knowledgeable. Unfortunately the business model of the school is to churn out so called graduates every month like a factory which leaves the teachers overworked. They are unable to give individual attention and answer questions which is much needed at a school. 

The cons are everything else. After graduation we had a horrible career guidance week which seemed very infantile and silly. The only thing we were doing is wasting our time with it. For a whole week we were forced to attend for the whole day and if we did not we were threatened with a bill by the team below. 

The Codaisseur graduate team as they call themselves is one of the most unhelpful business centred teams I have come across in both my professional and educational career. The team has two lead members whose sole purpose is to find a reason to blame the student for their issues in obtaining a job after graduation. After graduation I had the misfortune of being cordial with these two people and sharing my progress. However they did nothing but point out mistakes in their so called checklist for the job search period which were not mentioned anywhere in the contract. I believe the team has the impression that they can bully people into accepting any job by threatening them with a bill for the whole course which is 8000 to 12000 euros. Even if the job is paying lower than the industry standard they force you to accept it which goes against what they advertise and what they constantly tell us. If you do not accept it you are constantly threatened with calls and emails. 

Importantly there is no effort from Codaisseur's side during the job search. You are the only person searching for a job with no help unlike promised. You are using your own contacts and skills to find it. Even though they promise you help they do not help you. In the whole job search period which can be either 3 or 5 months which I will come to in the next paragraph I only received 2 job leads from the graduate team members and both these leads were something they found on the internet. They did not have any connection to the companies and they acted as if this was helping us. In the contract by saying that Codaisseur will do everything within reason to help you find a job. They have done absolutely nothing for me and almost all of my classmates. Being Dutch and still not being able to find a job in my own country would only be possible if there was something in my resume that makes people not want to respond and that was Codaisseur in my education. 

About the 5 month contract. During Corona we were asked to sign a 5 month contract which guaranteed us online extra job search assistance and a discount of 4000 euros on the tuition. Since most of us needed the assistance most of us signed it. As I already wrote in the end there was no help from Codaisseur. I spoke to many students from other batches and most of them had a similar experience. A lot of people despite not finding a job or losing a job during corona were given a 12000 euros bill to be paid by the next month because of some reasons that do not exist in the contract. This is why reading the contract becomes important. This is not only unprofessional on their part but can be legally hazardous for a company as reckless as Codaisseur. The same graduation team forced me to accept any job that came my way and also threatened me with these same consequences even though I did everything that was required by the contract. Not surprisingly I did not have a single interview despite applying for more than 150 applications. This leads me to believe that they are threatening most of their students with debt unless they do anything they say which technically amounts to bullying and in a more legal manner extortion. 

A school is supposed to support their students but the behavior of Codaisseur employees showed that this company was a scam at its finest. Stay clear of Codaisseur. I really hope someone reports them to the ministerie van onderwijs (ministery of education in the Netherlands).

TL;DRPositive: 

• you feel pushed to learn since you committed by signing a contract
• the teacher generally knowledgeable and good people
• you got technical support

Negative:

• you would learn more from doing 3 Udemy courses than here in 11 weeks
• the teaching quality is terrible, especially for the price
• the don't care about you, your project, or whatever you do; you have to be very bad at programming to be able to "fail" and not pay

Sum: The whole school is a waste of money and time. Since they don't guarantee work, just urge you to get one, so they get paid, you way better off learning from the much higher quality online sources, and maybe hire a coding coach/career coach when you feel ready, for less money.
When I was researching boot camps to learn programming, Codaisseur looked so good. Good reviews, Amsterdam is a fantastic city; everything seemed OK. Entry "interview" was a bit strange; they accepted everybody to the school, which is OK. You got access to an online site, mostly written material with some videos and barely any challenges. During "teaching" time, a teacher reads up the material, solves the problem, and you should do the same material rest of the day. The academy is 11 weeks, which is divided up the following:
1-2: Basic JavaScript/React; the most advanced stuff is how to use react-router.
3: Assessment week. Monday/Tuesday, you got a practice assessment, which you should solve alone but can get help. Wednesday/Thursday, you got a real assessment that you must submit - the same as the practice one. Friday, you wait, and a teacher will tell you if you passed or not. You might be able to get into a "workshop" on this day, which was terrible.
4-5: NodeJS and Redux; in the end, you should write basic REST API and use Redux. Teaching was still mostly reading up written material.
6: Assessment week. Same structure as week 3, but you have to write rest API and use redux.
7: "New technology" week, where you got one day for TypeScrip, GraphQL, React Native. Even more shallow teaching than before, you have a look at the material
8-9: Portfolio Project weeks. You have to make your portfolio project which after two weeks, somebody checks for 5 mins and says if it's OK or not. During the two weeks, the school's interaction is a daily call in the morning, where they only check that you are there, and that's it.
10: Group project week: they split you into groups, you should do some program together. They provide a topic, but after that, not much shit is given. You got average daily 5 minutes check-in from the teacher.
11: Carrier Accelerator week, where you get one technical interview, one formal interview, and they look at your CV and decide if it's good or not. Mine had some typoes that nobody noticed.
After week 11, you get once a week check-in from the school to see if you got a job yet or not. It is the only part I see where they give a shit since after you get your first job, you owe them the full tuition.

At Codaisseur there are a lot of hidden costs, fake advertising, and promises. Though Codaisseur allowed me to change career paths in a short amount of time, I am unsatisfied with the company and feel lied to. 

Of the 7 teachers, 6 of them are outstanding. They are always willing to help, motivate you and during the entire course, they gave me the feeling that they wanted me to succeed. Unfortunately, the teachers are constantly understaffed, you can notice that they are overwhelmed by the workload and they are unable to answer everyone's questions due to understaffing and a lack of time.

After passing the final assignment there is a week called 'Career Accelerator' which was, to put it nicely, a joke. The quality was poor, the career advisor was unorganised and didn't seem to care if you'd get a job or not. 
During the interview process, it was promised that Codaisseur would introduce you to their partners. In the end, not one student has been introduced to their so-called 'partners'. There is also NO job guarantee at all. YOU are the one who has to apply for the jobs, Codaisseur doesn't do anything to help you. You have a weekly call with their staff, but it's more to check if you're doing what they want you to do. They don't give advice (besides things like 'contact people on Linkedin', something every student does from day one...). We were promised job leads, the closest to those 'job leads' was that, after a few weeks of no serious job prospects, people were recommended by Codaisseur to take an (underpaid) internship.

Again, there is no job guarantee whatsoever. There is a staggering amount of students that graduated months ago, do everything in their power to get a job, but are still unemployed. Codaisseur doesn't seem to do anything to help them besides the 'weekly calls'. 

The course is fast-paced and extremely stressful. People dropped out of the course due to breakdowns from stress. These people still had to pay the whole fee of €10.802. 

There are hidden costs. Codaisseur claims that you only pay the €800 admission fee and that the rest (€10.802) will be paid by your future employer. This is a lie. YOU are the one who pays the €10.802. Maybe your employer pays it directly to Codaisseur, but it will be subtracted from your salary, so in the end, you pay the €298 per month yourself, for 29 months.
Another rather strange thing: they let the students do their sales talk with potential employers. The students have to tell them about Codaisseur, they have to tell them about the 11K debt that they have (and that the company will have to pay, if they hire them), they have to tell the company about becoming a partner of Codaisseur. Lots of students decide to never say anything about the fee to their potential employers because often employers will turn you down, simply because they don't want to hire a junior (who still needs a lot of training by their future employer) with a fee obligation of €10.802. 

During Codaisseur you have the feeling that you're supported and valued, but as soon as you graduate the course, the focus switches to the new students that just started their course. 

Another thing: Codaisseur claims that they are the #1 Coding Academy of the Netherlands. This does not mean that they are the best in The Netherlands, it just means that they are the first.

I finished the bootcamp a year ago and here's pros and cons:

Pros:

• You will learn a lot and will have hands on experience with coding
• You will build a couple of small apps which will give you a good idea what you're gonna do in future.
• In comparison to other bootcamps it's cheaper for the students
• There is help available from teachers and staff, not always though
• If you really want to be a junior developer and you already coded for a while and built some small apps this course can open doors
• If you like to be in IT industry in general, Having done this course increase your chances

Cons:

• Misleading advertisement: There is NO job guarantee! You will have to apply for jobs yourself and do everything so NO job garantee. What they later say is if you don't get a job after certain months, then you don't need to pay the fee, but there are a lof of IFs and BUTs about it.
• Carriculum had big gaps. The first part (Ruby) was better orginised and teached, Second half with React wasn't orginised properly and students had so many issues trying to learn. We had only 2 days on whole Javascript which wasn't slightly enough for the future projects.
• It is a very fast-paced and stressful course. It is nothing similar to a university or college course, We had people with near nervous breakdowns and stress-related drop outs, so if you can not cope with a lot of stress this course is not for you.
• No real job support: We were told that we're gonna get job leads but in reality we didn't get any.
• Under their contract you can not work with recruiters so it will limit your chances.
• If you leave the course for any reasons for instance stress, you still have to pay the whole fee: 9000 euros.
• Employment rate is debatable: Although some people got jobs but many people still didn't manage, and out of those who got the job many where not offered a contract after probation month. 
• Evaluation is very arbitrary, You don't get marks, It's mostly based on how the instructor feels about you rather your real abilities in comparison to rest of the class. You can be kicked out of the course in any day of the course. Two people who i worked with in group projects and were better coders than me, were kicked out by saying you're not good enough.
• Graduation rate: In additon to my own experience i had contact with batches after and before me and graduation rate was around 50% so almost half the students were either kicked out or droped out.
• You're tied up for 2 years so if your employer doesn't agree to pay the fee which happens often, you have to decline the job offer or pay from your own pocket.

Advice:

• Prepare yourself at least for more than 3 months before the course learning about languages you're gonna work in the bootcamp and make sure you build some apps yourself. Try some online coding courses and for sure Codeacademy basic courses are not enough. You have to do more, people who did better were the one who coded a while before the course, People who were kicked out were generally the one who hoped they're gonna learn it there.
• Read the contract carefully and make sure you know all about it.
• If you want to stay in the course, In your project reviews with your instructors do not criticize anything about your work or the course, As the evaluation is quite random, If you say you liked it and you're trying hard, the like it, if you say you're struggeling or need some help, you'lll be out soon. They don't like any feedback whatsoever.
• You won't have any time left during this course even weekends you'll be working, so make sure you're fully available.

If you want to start learning web development and you want to do it fast, Codaisseur is the right choice. Don't expect it to be easy, expect to give 150% of what you got (yeah, you have it) , expect to push your boundaries, to learn a great deal of stuff, to meet interesting people and friends, to have fun and to appreciate Friday beers. The most rewarding thing will be your graduation.

The programe is being improved and changed according to the industry needs, you get to work on individual and team projects, even a real-life project on the last week of the academy and more important, your portofolio. One month and a week after I graduated, I got my first job as a junior backend developer.